


Boy Bruised By Butterfly Chase

by StarkAstarte



Series: Days of War, Nights of Love [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angry Bucky, Angry Sex, Angst, Captain America: The First Avenger, Confused Steve, Dark, Grief, M/M, May Ruin Your Life [It Ruined Mine], Nothing Sweet about this, Past Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Some Canon, Steve and Bucky Fighting/arguing, Unhappy, What if Steve swears a lot?, World War II, lipstick kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-26 12:48:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3851539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarkAstarte/pseuds/StarkAstarte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I miss him, Steve,” Bucky says, hoarsely, shoulders deflating. His voice carries, like whispers in a confessional.</p><p>Steve frowns, confused. “Who, Buck?”</p><p>“Him. Steve Rogers. The little guy from Red Hook bleedin’ his thick-headed way across Brooklyn.”</p><p>“I’m here, Buck. I’m right here.” Steve reaches out his massive but still sensitively-shaped hand. Bucky shies away, and he drops it, helpless. Six-foot-four, and Bucky can still reduce him to nothing with a single word. Just like he could always inflate him with not much more.</p><p>“No. You ain’t. You’ve swallowed that brave, fearless little guy up. You’ve drowned him. You took him away without warning me I ain’t never gonna see Steve Rogers—my Steve Rogers— again.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boy Bruised By Butterfly Chase

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OwnThyself](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OwnThyself/gifts).



> Okay, I don't know what this is. A sort of follow-up to Hold Me And Tell Me We'll Burn Like Stars. I had all these plans to make it more coherent. I've been sitting on it for *months*. Like. *So many* months. And you lovely people have been asking me where I've been and if I'm planning on writing any more Stucky this century, and I appreciate you all so much. And I swear to God, I'm right here. Not going anywhere. Stucky for life. And it occurs to me, drowning in the trenches of this story, that coherent is not really a thing I need, with this. Nothing pretty about Steve and Buck in a dugout. So I am unleashing this as raw and unedited as it went down. Inconsistent vernacular, Leaping from moment to moment. Just like memory does. This is as naked as it gets. Think of this installment as transmissions from the front lines. Prose dredged up in a feverish seance. Confused. Scattered. Sad. Strange. Naked as being born. Naked as dying. This is for OwnThyself, my Belovedest. As always.

 

Bucky don’t hardly know where to look. He can’t hardly believe his eyes. He thinks he must be dreaming so he pinches himself real good, but all he gets for his trouble is a welt. He still feels like real life left him stranded a long time back. All the way back in Brooklyn, in a ten-dollar room where the ghost of Steve Rogers hacks his lungs out all night long. If Bucky listens real good, he can almost hear him rattling away like a coal-truck. He almost feels like he can reach out and touch him. But not  _this_  Steve, sitting like a statue of an American God in front of him now. Bucky can’t  _never_  touch this Steve. Not like he used to. He wouldn’t know how. His fingers twitch, aching for sallow skin and sinew that've been buried so deep in muscles even the  _ghost_  of the old, tiny Brooklyn Boy don’t hardly show at all, now.

It’s like Bucky’s stuck in a dream that don’t make no sense at all.  No matter how many times he pinches himself or shakes his head real hard, it’s still Steve’s face looking worried at him from across the fire they got going now that night’s coming down fast. He focuses on that. Steve’s face, even with the jaw like an iron trap. It’s the jaw he always had in spirit if in nothing else, and that’s what finally convinces Bucky he’s real. This is all real. He ain’t just dead on the table, dreaming himself up an afterlife. If this was the sweet hereafter, Steve’d still be light as a goddamn feather. Sweet and scrappy and small enough to hold.

“I still can’t hardly believe it’s you,” he says. “You sure it’s you, Steve?”

Captain America laughs, rubbing his neck and crunching his shoulders in, like maybe if he tries real hard he can shrink himself back to regulation size. No dice, though. “Most’ve the time, yeah. Sometimes, I can’t hardly believe it myself. I keep hittin’ my head on things.”

“Good thing there ain’t nothin’ much in it,” Bucky says. “You got the stuffing knocked outta you too many times to get precious with your head-meat, pal.”

The corner of Steve’s mouth curls up into a smile. The crooked half-grin Bucky’s been sweet on for most of his stupid life is a real kick to the guts. “I thought you took all the stupid with you. I guess you left me some after all.”

“Even Steven, pal. Just like always.” Bucky chokes on the words. Holds his hand up.  _I’m fine, goddamn it. Don’t fuss._ It makes him feel like Steve. Like he’s becoming Steve. Shaking and coughing. Weak and tender like meat falling off the bone. This is what it’s like. This is what it’s always been like, for his best pal. He didn’t hardly understand before how shitty helplessness really feels. Bucky coughs. Presses his fist to his mouth until he feels teeth.

Steve stiffens, hands clenching, like he wants to leap across the fire and pound the hell outta Bucky’s back, dislodge the rattle. But he stays put. He knows how to listen real good when it matters most. “Yeah. Just like always.” His voice sounds even. Flat, almost. It’s the way he sounds when he don’t want nobody knowing what he’s thinking. But it ain't never worked on Bucky. It sure as hell ain’t gonna start now.

They stare at each other. Bucky ain’t changed much, as far as he knows, but Steve’s looking at him like he don’t hardly know for sure if he’s really all there. Maybe he ain’t. Maybe he left something behind on that table. He don’t much want to think about that. It’s all blown to hell now, anyway. That’s got to be good enough. There’s torn places inside of him that ache real good, but now he thinks they might be closing back up. Stitched together by Steve’s gaze. Only Steve ever knew how to patch him up right. He don’t even have to be close enough to touch. Bucky just needs to see his face, pinched eyebrows, solemn mouth. The ripple in his throat as he swallows. That’s all the goddamn stitches he ever needs.

Steve’s neck ain’t what it used to be, neither. It’s a steel girder now in place of a twig. There ain’t nothing slender about him. His tawny hair flops over his forehead the same, but his hands are so big he could snap Bucky in half if he felt like it. Bucky’s waist could near get swallowed up in Steve’s grasp. His stomach churns just thinking about it. He don’t know if he likes the idea or hates it. He’s the little guy, now. Steve’s outgrown him by more than feet and inches. He looks at Steve, and he don’t know where he fits. Not just alongside the man in the star-spangled red white and blue, but in the world.  If Bucky ain’t scrawny, scrappy Steve Rogers' big, strong fella, he ain’t nothing much at all. He lived. He survived. But for what? He don’t know anymore what he’s for. Maybe he ain’t for nothing.

He sits real quiet til night falls down like a shroud and swallows him up. All around him, the night’s as dark as a grave. He can hear Steve breathing. Bucky wishes like hell he had a cigarette. Something do to with his hands. Something to put in his mouth. He ain’t hungry but he’s something.

 

Bucky’s different. Steve can see it. He looks the same, a bit thinner, a lot harder. The puppyish softness under Bucky’s chin. Gone now. With the last remnants of his youth. His boyishness cracked like a dropped mirror. His laugh has an edge to it Steve doesn’t much like. Bucky’s seen too much. His eyes’re just as blue, but they sink into his face like he’s starved for something that isn’t food. Even his old swagger’s gone, replaced by a slinking, animal grace. Furtive. Like something crouched and hungry in the shadows. He smiles just as easy, but when his face’s at rest, his mouth sure isn’t the plush curl of moistened pink Steve remembers. There’s a harshness there he doesn’t recognize. Bucky’s got the look of a man who’s swallowed a bitter brew. If Steve were to kiss him right now, like he wants to so bad, he’d taste like the sharp heart-meat at the centre of a peach. Sweet and sour. Like death. Like a wound gone septic.

There're ghosts living in Bucky’s eyes now. Steve can see them writhing to the surface and then subsiding, but never disappearing. Bucky'll never be the same boy from Brooklyn he’d always been. He’s made ghosts of other men and now he lives with them. His eyes are bombed-out foxholes. His mouth is a deeply-dug trench. His whole face is a war Steve showed up late for. Nothing he does now will ever change that. Compared to Bucky, Steve isn’t any kind of soldier. Not yet. But soon. He’s proven himself once. He will be goddamned if he waits long to do it again.

 

Steve washes Bucky. Cleans his wounds. Stitches him up. A catalogue of injuries. Steve his cartographer, fingers splayed over every inch of him in turn, inventorying the wounds of war. The beloved body is brand-new terrain. A warzone Steve hadn’t prepared himself for.  _Idiot. What did you think it was, a picnic? A block-party with toy rifles and ticker-tape ammo?_ He traces a particularly ugly knot of scar-tissue with the blunt edge of his fingernail. Bucky shivers, but doesn’t shrug him off.

“You’ve been shot, Buck. More than once.”

“I remember,” Bucky says. “Kinda hard to forget.”

Steve keeps on tracing the tender scar-tissue with gentle fingers. His hands on Bucky are huge. He can’t get used to it. “I didn’t get here when I should’ve. Too busy parading around in a star-spangled suit playing at socking Hitler in the jaw. And  _Christ_. Those movies I made. You’da been ashamed.”

Bucky scowls, looking at him straight for the first time all day. “Don’t be a moron. I ain’t never been ashamed of nothin’ you ever done in your whole life. Not gonna start now, and you’d better not, neither. I ain't gonna stand for it, Steve.”

Steve doesn’t say anything. He just keeps on administering as much triage and grooming as Buck will allow. He’s not sure how much Bucky even registers his anxious care. He looks like he’s only half here. Half out there somewhere, lost. Waiting. Or maybe not. Maybe some part of him doesn’t expect Steve to come for him, and that’s the part of him wandering, unrecoverable. Like a small boy in a story whose breadcrumb trail is all eaten up. Steve’s stomach lurches. His eyes prickle and sting. This isn’t a story. This is a life. And it will never be the same again. Bucky’s life is derailed. It’ll take more than a shot of serum and a new set of pipes for Steve to set it right again. He didn’t expect to feel  _more_  helpless than he did when he was the little guy. But what’s more helpless than somebody with all the right weapons but nowhere to aim them? He always used to know where to throw his punch, even if it ended up hurting him more than the other guy. Now the other guy is nowhere to be found. Steve’s just swinging wild into the empty air.

The thick waves of ungovernable hair Bucky’d always combed so careful, smoothing down the cowlicks, won’t behave for Steve. He doesn’t have the touch, but he doesn’t stop stroking his fingers through the oily thickness. It’s the only thing that’s made Bucky quit twitching since they got back to camp. Bucky looks ragged and beautiful. Like a fallen saint. St. Sebastian, maybe, full of arrows. The forest of dark stubble that only makes his face more sharply defined. A chiaroscuro of pale skin and hollow bones. He’s never been more beautiful. He’s never been more vacant. Steve’s gut clenches around the surge of desire licking through him. He’s got no right looking at Bucky this way. Not when half of him, the half nobody but Steve can see, is still AWOL out there, somewhere. Steve wants to go haring off after it. Drag it back kicking and screaming if that’s what it takes. He wants to hunt the rest of Bucky Barnes down and pin it back where it belongs. Where is that, exactly? Behind the butterflied-open cage of Bucky’s sternum? Deep into the marrow of his heart-meat? Behind his hollow stare? Is it the light Steve needs to recapture, the light seeping away right before his eyes?

Steve feels sick. He’s afraid. He’s the big guy now, and he feels as small and helpless as a stillborn kitten when he faces Bucky and doesn’t see himself reflected in those thousand-yard, thousand-years-ago eyes. He has the body he’s always wanted. And it doesn’t seem to fit right. He’d give it back in a heartbeat if it meant he could have Bucky’s body wrapped around him instead. He never questioned who he was or what he was for in that rickety bed in the broke-down apartment on Sullivan Street. He was Bucky’s. Bucky was his. No dame ever came between them. They had too much blood and busted bone between them. Too many sticky and frigid nights sweating and shivering in the same set of sheets. Now it feels like the whole East River’s between them, and neither of them can get to the bridge. Neither of them remember how to swim. Steve always clung to Bucky’s back when it came time for a plunge. Now he has to make it on his own. Turns out a shiny new body isn’t near enough. Seems like it’s the thing digging out the chasm between them. Steve doesn’t want to face the question of whether he’d give it back if he could because there’s no giving some things back. No getting some things back, either. He’s got to face that like the man he’s always wanted to be for Bucky Barnes. Even if it means he can never be Bucky’s man again.

 

The way Bucky watches. His eyes dark, unblinking. His grin sliding across his face a split-second too late to be as easy as he pretends. How he drinks now like it’s his job, but drunkenness is a chore that doesn’t come easy. His hands tremble when he isn’t holding a rifle. But when he is, he’s as still and steady as a bow-string pulled taut. His body an arrow, nocked. James Buchanan Barnes is a weapon.

He hardly talks. It’s unnerving. Used to be, Steve couldn’t ever get the guy to shut up, even if he’d wanted him to. Not that he ever did, much. But now he just. Broods. Like. One of those fellas in an old English novel full of thees and thous. He talks to Steve easy enough when Steve steers the conversation. Makes eyes at the girls like he always did. But they shy away from him now. They smile, but there’s something troubled in the way they glance at Bucky when his gaze slides away from them. Like they know his attention’s nothing more than mechanical. Like a wind-up toy stuttering through a set series of motions. Clever, but uncanny. And a bit. Unsettling.

Bucky’s eyes are always on him. Steve can feel them. They burn into his flesh like a pair of cigarettes slowly pressing down.

Bucky’s reckless, too. Spinning out of control. He needs something to anchor him. A mission. A purpose. Something square between his crosshairs. A target.

 

Small moments of mercy. Of reprieve. Tiny solitary instances of comfort amidst the terror and chaos. How Steve is outside of the camaraderie. These men have bonded with Bucky in ways he hasn’t. It’s a strange feeling. To be closer to the man he loves, he’s got to drag him further into war.

 

How silently Bucky melts into the trees. He lets the mist more than envelope him: he lets it erase him. Even Steve can’t track him down when he doesn’t want to be found, which is more and more often. Reconnaissance is his new passion. His ears are sharp, his eyes sharper, almost as if they’ve actually become a pair of rifle-sights. He’s a sniper like he’s a man: immutably. Unarguably. It’s written into his bones like a serial number no amount of scrubbing will erase. Steve looks at him and wonders how many years of his life this thing’s been dormant in Bucky. How long he’s been crouched deep inside of himself, waiting to become what he is. Steve isn’t the only one who’s changed. Who’s become something more than he seemed. He’s so goddamned grateful that for once he hasn’t been left behind. But even so. He feels like Bucky’s a million miles away from him, squirreled up in some tree like Peter fucking Pan. Some tree Steve’ll only ever find by accident, or because Bucky leaves him a trail. Steve looks everywhere, but the breadcrumbs have all been eaten. The stones that litter the path are just rocks like any others.

 

Steve isn’t sure what Bucky remembers. Sometimes it’s like he’s only half there. Like Brooklyn’s so far away, it might as well be another planet, like in those pulp novels Bucky used to inhale like candy whenever he could get his hands on one. Aliens and robots. Spaceships and distant galaxies. Bucky’s got stars in his eyes, and they gleam in a way Steve doesn’t think he likes much. He meets his friend’s gaze, and still doesn’t see himself reflected there. Not like he was before. Not like he was that last night in Red Hook, when Bucky’d shown him what his mouth was for. Now Bucky’s the one needs reminding. His mouth is buttoned tight, the plushness fused in the middle with the lock of his teeth. Steve can see them gleaming in the dark.  _What’d the war do to you, pal?_ he wants to ask. But never does. Bucky might take it the wrong way. He’s a good soldier. Strong and able. Reliable. Fearless. All the things he’d always been, for Steve.

Sometimes he surprises Steve with what he remembers. “’Member when your ma showed us how to cook?” he asks one night out on a mission, stirring a can of meat and noodles from a standard M-Unit ration, using one of the Commando’s helmets as a saucepan. They’ve learned to pack light, use what they’ve got kicking around. Steve and Bucky’re old hands at army austerity. For them, rationing’s always been standard practice. “Learnt us how to make a dollar stretch ’til it screamed. She sure wouldn’t be impressed with this slop.”

“She sure wouldn’t, Buck. But she’d make it taste good, anyway. Somehow. Even though all she ever used to season things was salt and pepper. I guess some folks just have the touch. You and me? We don’t.”

Bucky laughs. “You said it, pal. I sure don’t miss your eggs.”

“Well, it’s not like you had to have ’em often,” Steve points out, smiling, something in him unclenching. “And it’s not like you were complaining, then. Too busy stuffing your face with whatever I set in front of you.”

Bucky looks up then, crouched like a wild thing over the helmet of grey stew. Heat creeps up Steve’s neck as he realizes what he said. “Buck, I—Look, we…”

Bucky smiles slow and heated. “No, I ain’t never complained about what you had to give me, Stevie.”

The moment extends itself like a hand. Steve flushes and looks down. Bucky stirs the slop slowly, the scrape of the stick he’s requisitioned for cooking like fingernails on the back of Steve’s neck. His heart kicks up. His heart climbs into his throat. But neither of them say anything.

“You make coffee just like your ma,” Bucky tells him, after Steve was sure he’d never talk familiar to him again. “Always figured it tasted exactly like the bottom of a trench. Now I’ve spent a year kissing the ass-ends of foxholes, I finally know for sure.”

“And does it?”

“Damn close, pal. Real damn close.”

 

Sometimes Bucky’s aggression catches Steve by surprise. Bucky was always excitable. Prone to brawling. But most of that was on Steve’s behalf. Now he fights just because he likes to. He fights because it’s in him. Because he’s good at it and can.

“What, fighting Nazis for Uncle Sam not enough for you, pal?” Steve jokes after pulling him off some hapless enlisted man. “Simmer down, Buck.”

“Heard ’im call that other private a fruitcake. Didn’t like it.”

“You wanna sock somebody, try throwin’ a punch at me,” Steve tells him. “It’s obviously me you’re steamed at.”

“Oh, is it?” Bucky says. “Is it  _obvious_?”

“I don’t know what the hell’s got into you, Bucky, but I can’t hardly say a word without you jumping down my throat, or worse—pretending like you didn’t even hear me.”

“Maybe I don’t much like the way you talk these days.”

Steve stares at him. “What the hell are you yammering about?”

“Every third word outta your mouth’s got more’n three syllables, and usually a double meanin’, too.” Bucky says. “What, you ashamed of where you come from, alluva sudden? Of where  _we_ come from? I know Red Hook’s a shithole, I’m the first guy to admit it, but I didn’t figure on you wantin’ to turn your back on it.”

“Jesus, Bucky, don’t hold back,” Steve snaps. “What else’s wrong with me, while you’re at it? Am I not dragging my knuckles as much as I should?”

“What, like me? Just a dumb ape from Brooklyn, that what you’re gettin’ at, pal? You sure as shit didn’t mind when I was usin’ them knuckle-draggers to save your scrawny ass time and time again.”

Steve looks at him. “Actually, I  _did_. And you know it.”

They glare at each other for a long time. And for once, it starts to feel comfortable between them. They always did go in for knock-down, drag-outs to clear the air between them once in a while. They never got physical, but it was always as exhausting as an out-and-out brawl. Steve’s aching already. He almost feels like clocking Bucky one, but now that he’d actually be able to do some damage, the fantasy is pretty sickening. He unclenches his fist. Lets it fall open against his thigh.

“I miss him, Steve,” Bucky says, hoarsely, shoulders deflating. His voice carries, like whispers in a confessional.

Steve frowns, confused. “Who, Buck?”

“Him. Steve Rogers. The little guy from Red Hook bleedin’ his thick-headed way across Brooklyn.”

“I’m here, Buck. I’m right here.” Steve reaches out his massive but still sensitively-shaped hand. Bucky shies away, and he drops it, helpless. Six-foot-four, and Bucky can still reduce him to nothing with a single word. Just like he could always inflate him with not much more.

“No. You ain’t. You’ve swallowed that brave, fearless little guy up. You’ve drowned him. You took him away without warning me I ain’t never gonna see Steve Rogers— _my_ Steve Rogers— again.”

“Bucky, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

Bucky laughs and it’s such a bitter sound Steve can taste it. It curdles all the sweetness in him. “You’re  _sorry_ ,” he repeats. “You didn’t  _know_. Well, I guess that last night in Brooklyn didn’t mean nothin’ to you after all. I’m glad I know. Saves me a lotta trouble, thinkin’ on how this’s all been worth it. My life for yours. That’s the way it was s’posed to end out. Now I don’t know what the fuck I’m dyin’ for, just like I got no clue what I spent all those years livin’ for, cos clearly it sure as hell wasn’t for Steve Rogers after all.”

“Stop saying my name like I’m not here,” Steve says brokenly. “Stop talking like I’m dead and gone, Buck. That ain’t fair.”

“No, pal,” Bucky says quietly. “It sure ain’t. And it sure as hell ain’t fair that I only came out here on accounta you, and you don’t even need me no more. And I’m gonna die for no fuckin’ reason at all. Just like I lived.”

“Bucky, Bucky,” Steve says. “Where’s all this coming from? It sure doesn’t sound like you.”

But Bucky clams up. Turns his face away. Melts into mist without even walking away. Steve can’t let him. One of these days, Buck won’t come back. He’ll be standing right there, but he’ll be gone for good.

“I need you,” Steve says. Digging his fingers into Bucky’s shoulder, turning him around. “I always needed you, back in Brooklyn. I’ll need you for the rest of my life.”

“Or the rest of mine,” Bucky says, trying to jerk his arm away. Steve doesn’t let him.  _Can’t_ let him. “Cos my number’s sure as shit’s gonna come up first.”

“I don’t even know what to say to you when you’re like this. You’ve never been this way before.”

Bucky laughs. He laughs and laughs. “Look around, pal. I sure as hell got a good excuse.”

“I can’t believe you begrudge me this,” Steve says, gesturing to himself. “You know what it was like for me, growing up weak and sickly. Watching it all come so easy to you. And I’m  _not_ talking about girls, Buck. I’m talking about being able to stand on your own two feet. Make your way in the world like a man. Hell, Buck. You made your way in the world for  _two_ men, not to even mention everything you did to help out your ma  _and_ mine. I couldn’t even look after myself, let alone my ma—it was you who took care of her like I should’ve been able to. And now it’s too late. Not only that, but you’re mad at me for being strong and able-bodied enough to finally do what’s right—and not only in my  _head_  for once. Now you resent all the stuff you had to put up with before the serum. You feel like it was all wasted. But look at me. Really _look_ at me. Without you, I’d never be… _this_. This body is a gift  _you_ gave me, Buck. And it kills me to hear you say that you want to take it back.” Steve shakes his head, finally breathless. “I’m a man, now, Buck. Finally a  _man_  in a man’s  _body_ , like you. And you miss the little guy.”

“That little guy was the finest man I ever knew,” Bucky tells him. “Don’t you never act like he wasn’t.”

“Then  _you_  stop acting like I’m not him.”

“Then show me you still are,” Bucky tells him.

“I don’t know how else I can do that. What more can I do?”

“I dunno, pal. I wish I knew.”

“You’re the most fucking unreasonable asshole on God’s green earth, Barnes, you know that?”

“Well, at least I found a new calling. I got fired from my last gig.”

 

“I don’t know how to talk to him, Peggy. He’s so.  _Bitter_. You don’t know him, but that’s not like Bucky.”

“Something clearly happened to him in that Hydra facility, Steve,” Peggy tells him gently. “I know it doesn’t bear thinking about, but for your friend’s sake, I think you should consider that he isn’t the same man who left you behind in America. It’s not fair to expect him to be.”

“It’d take more than a little torture to bring down James Buchanan Barnes, ma’am,” Steve says stiffly.

She gives him a sharp look. “There are worse things in heaven and on earth than mere torture, Captain Rogers.”

 

“You’re too thin, Buck,” Steve tells him.

Bucky stares. Barks out the first genuine laugh Steve’s heard from him since the Hydra Facility Rescue. “I didn’t never think I’d hear the day Steve Roger’s’d be accusing Bucky Barnes of bein’ skinny.”

Steve smirks. “Yeah, well, if the uniform fits. Or, actually, doesn’t fit so good…”

Bucky shrugs. “Food’s not really all that interesting out here. I guess I lost my taste for it.”

“Taste’s got nothing to do with it, Soldier. You gotta keep your strength up.”

“What for? They keep talkin’ about sending me home.”

“They’re not sending you home, Buck. Not if you don’t wanna go.”

“What’re you talkin’ about?”

“I’m talking about Special Ops. How ’bout it, Sergeant? You wanna keep serving your country?”

Bucky shrugs. “Not particularly, but what the hell else’m I gonna do. Go back to Brooklyn by myself?”

“I sure hope not. I need you here, Buck.”

Bucky stares. A small, tight smile hijacks his mouth. “Captain American needs Bucky Barnes. Now, ain’t that a twist in the plot.”

“This ain’t a story, Buck. This is a war. This is real life.”

“Says you.”

“Is that a no?”

Bucky smiles thinly. “When’ve I ever said no to you in your whole sorry life?”

“Coupla times.”

“Well, this ain’t one of them.”

Steve nods. “Okay, then. I’ll alert the Command. Make it official. Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes is one of the Howling Commandos.”

“Christ, who the hell came up with that one?”

 

London at night. The gleam of barrage balloons in moonlight. Another scene from one of Bucky’s outer space novels. Sandbags shore up the buildings at their roots. Strips of gummy paper criss-cross the windows that remain intact, but most of the buildings look like they’ve had their eyes put out.

“I like English people,” Bucky remarks, sipping the head off of his ale. “They don’t fuck around. They get shit done without a lot’ve explaining. Don’t complain, neither. It’s refreshing, even though it’s weird as hell.”

Steve laughs. “That’s the first thing I’ve heard you say you liked since I got here,” he says.

Bucky rolls his eyes. “What’s to like?” He sounds so much like one of the old Jewish men hanging around the park, shooting the breeze over games of outdoor chess and paper cups of coffee that Steve’s all of a sudden and for the eightieth time punched in the gut with longing for home. For Brooklyn. For the slums of Red Hook and the bright, shining boy who used to live there with him, when he was small and angry and ready to take on the world. Now that he’s really doing it, the world seems too big for one man to take on. Even Captain America. And even with his friends.

And it’s true. Bucky doesn’t seem to like much’ve anything anymore. He sure as shit doesn’t like being on furlough. Doesn’t like having nothing definite he needs to do. Can’t govern his own time anymore. It makes Steve sad. Bucky, as hard as he’s always worked, was always the king of slacking off. Of enjoying life. Sucking every ounce of pleasure from anywhere he could get it. Now the idea of nothing much to do, even for a finite amount of time, makes him uneasy. Sometimes Steve fakes a reconnaissance, just to get Bucky to relax.

The sounds of the bombs at night, like the shrill of a demented teakettle. The keen of the air-raid sirens indistinguishable from the All Clear. The only difference is the context of time. Missing buildings like busted-out teeth. Stairwells attached to nothing. Exposed walls. Piles of rubble. Furniture without a scratch on it set down in empty craters like the playthings of giant, invisible children. Kids scrambling, screaming over the ruins playing obscure games with no rules. Detached scraps of wallpaper crinkle in the breeze. A dame’s empty shoe rests on a cobblestone. Waiting for its foot to return for it.

Bucky’s eyes follow dames, but not the kind he used to like, back in Brooklyn. His gaze passes over the sweet good-time gals in favour of the sultry, broken-eyed women who lurk, as he does, in the shadows. Thin girls. Hungry girls. Girls with teeth that gleam. Girls like him. He dances them ragged, then leaves them standing there, alone. Still starving to death with nothing to feed what’s hungry in them.

“What is it with Barnes and women?” Gabe asks. “He doesn’t seem to like them much, though they sure as hell like  _him_.”

“Buck likes women fine,” Steve replies mechanically. And it’s true. Bucky’s always loved dames. Loves them the way he loves himself. A cautionary passion tinged with bitterness. Usually he hides it better.

But the women skitter away from Bucky, even when he doesn’t approach them. He’s a coiled thing. Dangerous. He’s no longer fit company for girls in soft summer dresses. His fingers would tear them to shreds. His body would be their bodies’ undoing. They want him still. Steve can see that. They want him, and their longing is a terror beneath the skin.

 

Bucky’s never surly with Steve in front of other people. As far as anyone can tell, he worships the ground his friend walks on. The way he looks at him. The way he praises him to anyone who’ll listen. The dogged way he follows wherever Steve leads. No one knows how angry he is. Even Steve forgets for a few tender, terrifying hours under siege.

At night in the tent they share, or bivouacked in some desolate field. Buried under bracken in a dense forest. Huddled up in a foxhole, back to back. Steve has his old friend back. Only this time Bucky is the small, shaken one. “It’s okay, pal. It’s okay. I’ve got you, Buck. I’ve got you.”

Far in the future, when Steve faces the Winter Soldier. He won’t be unfamiliar. He will see in his eyes the adversary he’s already known a good long while. The man from the trenches who took his best friend and lover hostage as far back as 1943.

 

Bucky finds Steve’s sketchbook. Flips through it with a frown. Nothing of the old expression of admiration and delight that used to come over him looking at Steve’s drawings. “This what I look like now?” he asks.

Steve sighs. Looks. “Might just be how I see you,” he says. “I dunno, Buck. It’s a good question.”

And the Bucky Steve sketches now  _is_ different. His face in stark relief. Deeply shadowed eyes of both hunter and hunted. The naked hunger of his bared teeth belying the plushness of his mouth. The way his body curls in on itself, protecting something he never lets Steve see. He’s shuttered himself, like an empty house. There’s nothing inside but ghosts, rattling around, mouthless. Armless.

The Bucky in front of him looks like a man who’s got nothing left to let go of.  _What about me?_ Steve wonders.  _You already let go of me, too, Buck?_

 

“You ain’t supposed to be here, Stevie! That wasn’t never the deal, okay? This is my deal. Mine. You’re s’posed to be back home in fuckin’  _Brooklyn_!”

“What are you so goddamn mad at, all the time? You hate I’m here, that’s plain. What, you can’t stand sharing the glory?”

Bucky’s eyes bug out of his head. “Glory? Are you fuckin’ serious, Rogers? I’m scared. So scared you’ll get yourself killed. And I’m too small to do nothin’ much about it now. You’re the big fella and I’m the little guy, and you’re too busy watchin’ my back to take care of your own. I’m a liability now.”

“Just like I used to be,” Steve says. “That how it was, back in Red Hook?”

“It ain’t the same, and you know it. This is a war, Steve.”

“So was that. And  _you_  know it.”

 

Peggy. “She your girl now, Steve? She’s some dame. Don’t think much of me, so we know she’s at least got good taste. Mean right-hook too, so I hear.”

 

In Germany. An old theatre, a secret relic of the Weimar Republic. A burlesque show where the dame is a fella, not as young as she pretends. The same vulnerability on her face as on Bucky’s. She sings only to him, her eyes smouldering like lit torches. Not singing to him like a dame to her fella. But like someone who knows her own kind. Two wild, lonely creatures howling to each other across the night, one sonorous, the other silent as the grave. Bucky’s eyes never leave her. She walks past their table to exit the stage doors. Slides her fingers down Bucky’s face. Strokes his jaw. Leans in and kisses him softly on the cheek. Leaves a mark like a wet, red wound.

She looks over at Steve. Intent. Smiles sadly. Her accent when she speaks is thick, her voice surprisingly delicate, like a torn ribbon. “You take care of this one, Soldier,” she tells him. “He’s got him a lot of wounds nobody can see.” Steve nods. “Yes, ma’am.” She smiles at him beatifically. She pulls him in by the lapel and kisses him long and deep. Like a dame kissing her fella. Steve lets her kiss him as long as she likes. She leaves a smear of red glistening across his lips like a defiant flag. Steve doesn’t wipe it away.

Bucky studies him for a long time. Swallows down his last finger of whiskey. “Looks good on you, punk.”

Steve smiles. “You can try some if you want. I got plenty to go around.”

Bucky’s grin is slow, wicked. Genuine. “Well, you know red’s my colour.”

“Sure is. And you got such a pretty mouth.”

“I do, don’t I?”

Steve swallows. Nods.

 

Steve’s mouth on Bucky’s cock, smearing it red. He finally feels full inside. This is what he’s for. This’s what he’s always been for. Shells raining down all around them. The sky ripped wide, a grinning maw. Bucky holds himself rigid. Even with Steve pinning him with his mouth, his pants shoved down and his bare ass grinding into the rubble of a dugout, he’s only half there. His hands clamped into the dirt, as far from Steve as he can get them without amputating and tossing them like grenades into the night.

“Jesus, Buck,” Steve groans, pulling his mouth away. “Put your hands on me. I can’t wait anymore.”

Bucky blinks, staring down at him. “You’ve been. Waiting. For me?”

“What, you want me to spell it out for you in sky-writing? It’s not like we haven’t been here before.”

“Wasn’t you,” Bucky says mechanically.

“It fucking  _was_ ,” Steve argues belligerently.

“Well, you didn’t used to fucking cuss so much, pal. So you can see where I’m confused.”

“You didn’t used to tease me so bad, Buck.”

Bucky stares at him. “I’m scared, alright?”

“What, of me? I know I’m bigger, but I won’t do anything to hurt you. You can. Do anything you want to me.”

Bucky shakes his head impatiently, dragging his trousers back into place. Tucking in his deflating erection. Everything in Steve screams  _No. Please. Come back to me_. “Not of  _you_ , dummy. I’m scared of  _me_. I ain’t as kind as I used to be.”

“This is a goddamn war, Sergeant. Who the hell’s asking for kind?”

 

Later, another night too dark for lies. Steve’s hand clamped over his mouth. Bucky can’t hardly breathe. Don’t even wanna breathe. Likes feeling like maybe this is his last moment on earth. Wishes maybe it could be. Steve holding him down. Reminding him what being alive is for the moment before he ain’t no more. Death’s with them. Death tries to slide in between them. But Steve don’t let it. Steve don’t leave enough room between them even for Death.

“I’m gonna hold you down, Soldier.” He growls into Bucky’s ear. “And you’re gonna take every inch of me.”

Bucky's face planted in the dirt. He wants to die here. This is how he wants to be buried. _Let Death in, Stevie. Let Death in._

 

A stolen fuck in the Weimar dressing-room. Bucky paints his mouth with lip-rouge, slowly, eyes never leaving Steve’s face. Pockets it after, leaving money tucked beneath some of the bottles on the table, first pressing a perfect red O into the tattered bill. She won’t mind. She’ll like it. Probably keep it for good luck. A souvenir of a time both worse and better than any she’ll ever know. Bucky’s so different now. So beautiful and doomed. The way Buck looks at Steve in the mirror while Steve fucks him makes his heart leak crimson. “I shoulda died on that table,” Bucky says hoarsely. “You shoulda left me where I was.”

Steve hoists his splayed thigh, spins him around without pulling out, hand reflexively on his throat. “Don’t you ever say that to me again,” he says.

Bucky laughs. “Or what?”

“Or,” Steve grinds into him. “This’ll be the last time we do this.”

Bucky looks at him, considering. “Okay. Deal. Cuz pal? This’s the only goddamned thing that makes me feel wrong about that.”

“Then I’m gonna do this to you every goddamn day of your life,” Steve breathes. “So you never forget.”

“That a threat or a  promise, Captain?”

“Both, Sergeant. Hell, what's the difference?”

 

Bucky waits for Steve, naked on his cot, wearing nothing but the reddest lip-paint. His mouth perfect as an overblown rose. Steve likes to lick the lipstick off of Bucky’s mouth when they’re done, just like he does his come. “Waste not, want not, pal.” They know it’s a secret they’ve got to hide. Swallowing the evidence. Taking it into his own body. It’s something Steve understands. It’s something so beautiful Bucky can’t hardly watch him do it. Can’t hardly look away. “Tastes like perfume,” Steve confides. “I’ve never tasted perfume before. It’s sweet, but bitter, too.” He slides his tongue into every seam. “I like it.”

“You ever wish I was a dame, Steve?”

“Never. Except if you was one, I’d love you the same. Dame, fella—either way, Bucky. I’m yours.”

Steve’s quiet for a while. Brow furrowed. “You’re the one with all the experience with women, Buck. You ever wish I was one?”

Bucky looks at him. “I can’t say I can picture you as a dame, Steve. Not now, especially. You’d make an awful strange woman.” Steve punches him, and it hurts. Bucky grabs him by the wrist. He can’t hardly get his fist around it. “Ow, hey! Wait! I ain’t done. You don’t let a fella finish. What I was gonna say, Steve, is the same thing you said. I don’t care if you’re a skinny fella can’t hardly breathe right, or some scary dame with muscles bigger’n Brooklyn. I’m yours, too, pal. Til this war is done with me.”

“And after?”

Bucky smiles sad and soft. “We’ll see.”

 

Bucky, drained and lipstick-smeared. Why do they do this? Could be they want something soft in all this mess. Something warm and tender and yielding. They ain’t dames. Don’t wanna be dames. They just. Want something this fucking asshole of a war can’t never touch. Something red and wet that ain’t blood.

 

The feeling that they’ve chased each other merrily into a meadow, chasing brightness. Wound up in a muddy field instead. Boys blown to pieces who thought they’d been summoned to a dance. Invited on a picnic. Boys playing stickball in an alley lifting their bats into the postures of guns.  _Rat-tat-tat. Boom. You’re dead, Buck! You’re_ dead _! Nuh-uh, Stevie! This here’s a Safe Zone. As long’s I stay here, I’ll live forever! Ain’t you never hearda No Man’s Land before? Can’t nobody get shot here._ Marbles rattling in pockets. Marbles rattling. Rat-tat-tat. Boom.

 

Steve’s accent has changed. But it comes back in the dark. Brooklyn’s slovenly side-streets digging their fingers back into him. Taking him by the throat as he takes Bucky, hard and fast and deep.

 

“I need you to make me feel small again. Please.”

Bucky looks at him. “Stevie. You’re.  _Scared_. Ain’tcha?”

“Course I’m scared, Bucky. I’m not an idiot.”

“Says you.” They laugh. Desperately.

 

“Your clothes’re in shreds, Buck. We gotta find you something else to wear.”

“Not a uniform.”

“No,” Steve agrees. “Ain’t no need for that now. We gotta be stealthy.”

Bucky snorts. Pokes a finger at the star emblazoned on Steve’s chest. “Yeah, that’s  _real_ sneaky, pal.”

Steve laughs, batting his hand away. “Call it hiding in plain sight. I want ’em to  _know_  who kicked their asses and took their names.”

“What happened to our old clothes? All our stuff. Hell, not that we had  _much_. But.”

“You mean, back in Brooklyn?”

“Yeah. All our sad-lookin’ shit.”

Steve shrugs. “I don’t actually know. I just sort of. Left it all. Came after you. I  _thought_  that’s what I was doing, anyway.”

Bucky nods. “We didn’t need any of it anyway.”

Steve slings an arm around Bucky’s shoulder, and it feels so  _wrong_. Bucky feels like  _he’s_  Steve, even though he’s looking right at him. “Yeah. We got all we need right here.”

But something in Bucky aches like a sonuvabitch, thinking about that sad little gathering of things. Their broke-down paisley sofa. The rickety bed they shared. The sad little blanket like a tattered flag of surrender. Except surrendering is the last thing they ever did. Even to each other. Only they did, sometimes. Didn’t they, by God.

 _Them things. That apartment._ That _was the goddamn country I fought for, Stevie. And you. I'm **still**  fighting for that. For you. For us as we coulda been. Not for America, not this sorry life of mine, near used-up like an old jar of Brilliantine. I fight for that sad little box in Brooklyn._ _The only place we've ever been able to lay down our arms._

 

How Bucky starts to change.  Don’t hardly feel like himself. Sounds. Smells. Thoughts. Everything intensified. He can feel it. Like fog burning off. Everything crisp. Clear. Too clear. He misses the confusion. He never was too smart. Bucky don’t wanna be smart. He just wants to be the strong one. Steve’s strapping fella. Barring that, Steve's broken doll. Just. Steve’s _anything._

Howling Commando missions. Abandoned castle, half-blown to smithereens. Him and Steve in the dark. Moving in the dark. Towards something ain’t even there. They’re drowning without no water. Drowning in the cordite-stippled air. Bucky holds his breath. Holds it til Steve breathes into him. Breathes for him like he woulda done for Steve back when, if he coulda. He'd've been Steve's lungs for the rest've his life. Now he can't even work his own. 

Bucky remembers Brooklyn, nights like this. He remembers every goddamn thing. The sharp stink of iodine. Steve’s fighting face. His fierceness. His seeming humourlessness that Bucky knows is misleading. The burn and sting of gravel being removed. Their hands on each other. Their mouths. The dark. The dark. The dark. He feels like he’s falling. He is falling. He falls, and it ain’t no surprise. Steve’s face is shocked. Bucky reaches out. He ain’t gonna fall forever but this is it and it’s happening as slow as it happens fast. This here’s his last moment. Steve’s face. Steve. Steve. He screams. Bucky screams. Reaching out. Finally reaching out. Nothing to grab onto. Biggest fella on earth above him. Steve doesn’t reach back, and that’s when Bucky knows. Mission complete. Mission done and dusted. All over, pal. All over. Goodnight, Bucky. Goodnight, Pal. Goodnight, Stevie. Give old Hitler a sock in the jaw for me.

He falls. He falls. He's falling. He'll fall for the rest've his sorry life--


End file.
